'Biggest game' turns 50 today

2of5Former San Antonio high school football greats Warren McVea, from the left, and Linus Baer sign autographs following their appearance at a sports luncheon at The Bright Shawl in San Antonio, Saturday, Monday, November 19, 2007.
( Photo by J. Michael Short / SPECIAL )Photo: J. MICHAEL SHORT, SPECIAL TO THE EXPRESS-NEWS

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4of5LINUS BAER, LEE HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL HALFBACK FROM THE 1960s. PHOTO COURTESY OF LINUS BAERPhoto: COURTESY OF LINUS BAER

Fifty years ago, while the nation mourned its slain president, two San Antonio high school football teams did what they could to heal their city and, in the process, created a masterpiece for the ages.

The Lee Volunteers outlasted the Brackenridge Eagles 55-48 before a packed crowd of 25,000 in Alamo Stadium.

Highlighting Lee's Linus Baer and Brack's Warren McVea, arguably the state's two best players, it lived up to its pregame hype. Forty years later, the Dallas Morning News called it the biggest game in the first 100 years of Texas High School Football.

But there was more at stake than a 4A (now 5A) bi-district playoff game.

The game was played against the backdrop of a nation in shock and on edge. President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas the week before.

There were other storylines unfolding. This game pitted the North Side against the South Side, which still is the city's major socio-economic dividing line. In San Antonio, a lot of local culture is built around high school affiliation. This game would be for a lot of bragging rights.

And at the same time, race played a factor. With a team from a predominantly Anglo school playing a team from a predominantly minority school, it mirrored the civil rights movement of the day.

“The city really needed this,” said Gary DeLaune, the legendary local sportscaster who produced a 2003 documentary on the game.

“Everyone was very respectful of each other,” said McVea, 67, who works as a courier in Houston. “We wanted to win, but we treated each other with respect.”

“The country was segregated, but things were different in San Antonio,” said McVea, who became one of the first black scholarship athletes in Texas when he signed with the University of Houston. “Everybody had a relative at other schools. We all knew each other.”

The game helped heal the community.

“The importance of the game,” former Lee player Gary Eldridge explained in the documentary, “is that it brought two parts of an old city together. And after the game, it was 'We are as one.' I think that set the stage for San Antonio, in many ways, like that.”

McVea and Baer, both seniors, were already familiar with each other.

The two boys were the star athletes of their schools.

McVea scored 40 touchdowns that season and averaged 10.2 yards every time he touched the ball.

Baer scored 25 TDs and averaged 9.2 yards per carry.

“We competed against each other in other sports,” said Baer, now senior vice president at AmCorp, “mainly basketball and track. We ran against each other in track all of the time. There's a lot of down time at a track meet, so we got to know each other. We became friends.”

McVea remembers those conversations.

“We chilled out at all of the track meets,” he said. “We became good friends. We talked about how we might one day play each other.”

They got their wish on Friday night, Nov. 29, 1963.

The game was televised live on WOAI and carried by local stations around the state. It was the first high school game broadcast statewide, DeLaune said.

The game was unusual for that era of football.

The high score, which seems normal to modern fans familiar with spread offenses, was uncommon at any level of football. It was a run first, pass later game with some contests ending 3-0 or 7-0.

And there were anomalies in the box score.

High-scoring shootouts usually mean a game with plenty of passing, but only 10 passes were attempted in the game. Return yardage was low because all but two of the game's 17 kickoffs were onside, though Baer returned a rare long kick 95 yards for a touchdown.

McVea had been a running back and receiver for his entire career, including his junior season in which Brackenridge won the state championship.

“I'd only carry the ball six or eight times a game,” he said. “In my senior year, I could score almost every time I touched it.”

To get the most out of McVea, Brack coaches moved him to quarterback for that game, catching Lee by surprise.

McVea finished with 21 carries for 215 yards, and completed one pass for 18 yards.

Baer, who also kicked and punted, ran for 195 yards on 19 carries and caught three passes for 94 yards.

At one point, the two stars passed each other at midfield after a touchdown.

“Man, this is like a track meet,” McVea said to Baer.

Players on both sides say it was a clean game, though McVea remembers that, on Baer's kickoff return for TD, an unidentified Lee player blocked him and then, for good measure, locked his legs around the diminutive McVea.

“He didn't want me to get up and tackle Linus,” McVea said, laughing.

Lee led 34-19 at halftime, though Brack was driving as the second quarter ended.

The Eagles rallied, cutting it to 40-33 at the end of the third and tying it with just over five minutes left.

The Volunteers took the ball back and calmly drove down the field, scoring from the two-yard-line with 0:30 left in the game.

Brackenridge's rally ended when a scrambling McVea was tackled on the 40-yard-line.

After the game, the players shook hands and met in the middle of the field to pray.

Lee would lose the next week against Corpus Christi Miller, which lost in the state championship game that year to Garland.

To say the game was memorable is an understatement.

Ten years later, Baer was asked to narrate a public showing of the game film. More than a hundred people crammed into the room and a hundred more were turned away. A second showing had the same turnout.

Baer, who signed with the University of Texas, scored five touchdowns that night.

McVea, who later would play for the Kansas City Chiefs scored six.

Baer would have scored six times had he not fumbled into the end zone on the game's opening drive.

Lee's Bill Knippa is credited with recovering it in the end zone for the Volunteer touchdown, but that's the most hotly debated play in San Antonio schoolboy football history.

To this day, as shown in DeLaune's documentary, Brackenridge players swear they recovered it.